Sites
Humor and News
Humor/Satire
PG = Adults over 17)
Parody Archive
Bert is Evil(PG)
Bob’s Fridge Door
Borowitz report.com
Bushism of the Day
Chickenhead
Capitol Steps
ComedyLab(PG)
Enron-ron-ron Song
Enron V-Mail System
Funny Times
Humor In The News
Ironic Times
Infinite Jest
Landover Baptist(PG)
MadBlast
Mark Fiore
Onion(PG)
SatireWire
Three Stooges
Too Much Coffee Man
Valley of the Geeks
Whitehouse.org(PG)
Enska’s Home Page
Daily News
Ananova (UK)
BBC News (UK)
Boston Globe
CS Monitor
Guardian (UK)
Los Angeles Times
New York Times
NPR
Times (UK)
Washington Post
Washington Times
Weblogs/Links
Blogdex
Google News
Google Zeitgeist
Guardian Weblog (UK)
Lycos 50
Scout Report
Weekly Standard
The Week in Humor
Banner Ads We’d Like To See. These parody banner ads from the Valley of the Geeks are really good. If you liked those, there are even More Banner Ads to enjoy.
Ken Lay Slept Here: The Enron Photo Album. Check out and keep track of Kenny Boy’s buds.
100 Greatest Online Games. A procrastinator’s delight. Be patient, because it takes a while to load. Also, if you are interested in the history of computer games, you might find forty years of computer games interesting. Remember Pong?
- Mood Map. A mood ring map? It looks like no site is too silly for IWR! Take for example the Art of Pen Spinning. Need I say more? Also, have you seen the Folding The $20 Bill 9/11 trick. Snopes has more on this in Post No Bills. Finally, keeping with the this silly theme is the Why I love spam story.
NewsWeird
Snopes Rumors of the Week
- Brian Epstein and ‘My Bonnie’
- George Washington and the angel at Valley Forge
- Mexico and the Missing Cyanide
Animation of the Week
IWR is continuing to run the complete Edgar Beals A+++ series — Plickey and Muto.
Plickey + Muto: Shop 2 – Edgar Beals
Use The Farce – Mark Fiore
World’s First Self-Service Enema Machine
| Dibley, OH — The world’s first self-service enema machine has been un-veiled by Dibley Bots, Inc. According to the manufacturer, the ailing patient only needs to insert their credit card into the reader and then start the enema initialization process. The first unit is expected to be installed in the local Dibley Wallgreen’s. |
The Parody Newsline
MS Remedy To Cause Plagues
Valley of the Geeks (05/12/2002)
Statement by the President Regarding Democrat Jimmy Carter’s Conversion to Communism
Whitehouse.org (05/13/2002)
U.S. Protests Mexi-Canadian Overpass
The Onion (05/15/2002)
Area Man Criticizes Hazelnut Coffee, Volvos, New Mexico’s Flag In Two-Minute Span
The Onion (05/15/2002)
President Responds to Terror Report Furor: "Bill Clinton Was Also Warned". (PG)
Whitehouse.org (05/17/2002)
AL-QAEDA LIBERALS DEMAND "LIFE IN PRISON TO THE WEST"
SatireWire (05/18/2002
Political Humor
Photo Op-Portunism
Maureen Dowd, NY Times (05/15/2002)
Abs-Surdity – Can the ab-enhancing devices hawked on late-night TV give me a stomach of steel?
Eric Umansky, Slate (05/14/2002)
Sweet Schemes
Art Buchwald, Washington Post (05/14/2002)
Hypocritical hyperbole
Molly Ivins, WorkingforChange (05/16/2002)
Classin’ Up the Joint
Art Buchwald, Washington Post (05/16/2002)
The Case for the Empire
Jonathan V. Last, Weekly Standard (05/16/2002)
Salmagundi
Sites
Computing and Technology
Computing
CNET Tech. News
Computerworld
InternetNews.com
Newsbytes
Register (UK)
Silicon Valley
Snopes Netlore
Snopes Additions
Technology Review
Wired News
Business
Business Week
Business2.com
CBS MarketWatch
Financial Times (UK)
Forbes.com
Fortune
Red Herring
The Week in Computing
A Bad, Sad Hollywood Ending? Business Week makes the case that Fritz Hollings rather than Bill Gates is a bigger enemy of the Open-source software movement.
Big Media Mergers Raise Big Doubts. Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post thinks that the recent media mergers like Time Warner-AOL are financial losers.
‘Experimental’ Online Ads Take On Obnoxious Tone. Michael Bartlett of the soon to be axed Newsbytes (see story below) has a good rant about a topic dear to all surfers — those annoying pop-up adds. I think the ad that irked me most personally was the Intel add that sucked all the memory out of my old Pentium Pro. Now that’s dirty pool!
At MIT, they can put words in our mouths. Interesting article by Gareth Cook on how advances in video technology at MIT can manipulate, in a very realistic way, the words a person is saying. For example: MIT took a video of woman speaking English and changed it so she was singing convincingly in Japanese!
Book Reviews Find Homes on Web. Good Wired article on the transition of book reviews from the few to the many.
Freeservers.com Free Web Space. I haven’t tried this service, but it may be a good way for the novice to start their own web page or blog. Here is a good reference for creating your home page: Top-10 Guidelines for Homepage Usability. Remember there are free blog services that you can use. I’ve only tried blogger, it is easy to use. However, I would recommend that you spend some time checking out the alternatives.
Religion Finds Technology. A good article on how Calvary Cathedral of Praise, a church in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, is using video and sound technology to enhance religious services.
Washington Post Co. to Shutter Newsbytes. This is very bad news, and I hope the Washington Post reconsiders this decision. Newsbytes is one the best computing news services on the Net. It has more real news than any of its glossy competitors. I hope the Post will realize what a mistake closing Newsbytes would be. I sure will miss the daily update. That’s where I find a lot of interesting links.
Meatmarket.com. Salon reviews the state of the art of online dating.
The Politics of Computing
The Supreme Court And the Wild, Wild Web
Newsbytes (05/15/2002)
Senator [Lott] Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill
NY Times (05/17/2002)
Prisoners go to work for Dell
The Register (05/19/2002)
Bottom Line
Internet Mergers, Acquisitions Heat Up – Report
Newsbytes (05/14/2002)
Lindows judge throws the book at MS
The Register (05/16/2002)
Microsoft opts Passport holders into spam hell
The Register (05/17/2002)
Beware The ‘Internet Death Penalty’ – Study
Newsbytes (05/20/2002)
Security, Hacks and Patches
MS releases grand daughter of all IE security patches
The Register (05/16/2002)
Gummi bears defeat fingerprint sensors
The Register (05/16/2002)
‘Dork’ Duo Finally Get Noticed
Wired (05/16/2002)
Hoax tells people to nix Windows file
CNET (05/16/2002)
Windows Media Player Exposes IE Users To Attack
Newsbytes (05/16/2002)
MS IE patch misses the mark
The Register (05/17/2002)
Worm Infiltrates Kazaa File-Swapping Network
Newsbytes (05/20/2002)
Blogging in the Rain
WarLog: World War III: Proposal for The Weblog Foundation by Jeff Jarvis
Buzzmachine (05/?/2002)
The Week in Computing (Continued)
kd. The IWR Blog of the Week by Karen. A great alternative to all those ranting, bratty, gotcha, political blogs.
Sites
Science and Health
Science News
BBC Sci/Tech
CNN Sci/Tech
National Geographic
Nature News
New Scientist
NY Times: Science
Science Daily
Sky and Telescope
The Week in Science and Health
Study: Desks harbor more germs than toilet seats. Does this mean that we will need to start using giant paper desk sheet covers before we set down at our desks in the morning?
Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field. Interesting new theory on how the brain and "consciousness" might work.
Housework won’t get you fit. Perhaps, but it sure keeps the flies away.
Polar bears on the web. Check out the how the Norwegian Polar Institute is tracking polar bears on the Net.
Researcher Analyzes the Meaning of Meows. A Cornell researcher is out to prove what every cat owner already suspected — cats control the Universe! Then again, sometimes a meow is just a meow.
Why Does School Own Clone Patent? The University of Missouri holds a U.S. patent on human reproductive cloning. Does John Ashcroft know about this?
American Experience: War Letters. War Letters looks like another winner from the producers of the American Experience. It should air on most PBS stations on Sunday May 26th at 9:00 PM.
When Backyards Were Laboratories. Interesting article on the decline in youthful science experimentation. The article points out that half of the American public think dinosaurs and people existed at the same time!
Health
Freezing Cancer Cells Makes Them Prime Targets For Anti-Cancer Drug, New Study Finds
ScienceDaily Magazine (05/15/2002)
New drug tackles Alzheimer’s clumps
New Scientist (05/15/2002)
Love rats point to female sex drug
BBC News (05/20/2002)
Psychology
Family History Of Hypertension Is Related To Maladaptive Behavioral Responses
ScienceDaily (05/14/2002)
Quick learners ‘may become big drinkers’
Ananova (05/15/2002)
Babies recognize monkey faces better than adults
Ananova (05/15/2002)
Astronomy and Space
Hubble’s ‘Pillars of Creation’ are fading
BBC News, (05/14/2002)
Spintronics
Scientific American (June 2002)
Odds on aliens
Philip Ball, Nature (05/15/2002)
Cosmic wrinkles smoothed
Philip Ball, Nature (05/16/2002)
Mercury meteorite puzzle
BBC News, (05/16/2002)
11 More New Moons for Jupiter
Sky and Telescope (05/16/2002)
Asteroid let dinosaurs rule
Nature (05/17/2002)
Gamma ray bursts tied to supernovae
New Scientist (05/17/2002
Probability of alien life rises
New Scientist (05/19/2002)
China sets date for the moon
BBC News, (05/20/2002)
Environment and Nature
Utility Buys Town It Choked, Lock, Stock and Blue Plume
NY Times (05/13/2002)
Rwanda battles gorilla poaching ring
BBC News (05/14/2002)
Honeybees in a Mite More Than Trouble
Washington Post (05/14/2002)
Hot on the Contrails of Weather
Wired (05/15/2002)
Climate change threatens polar bears
New Scientist (05/15/2002)
Crocodilians’ Hunting Secret Blue Freckles?
National Geographic (05/16/2002)
Flooding of Soviet uranium mines threatens millions
New Scientist (05/16/2002)
China plans record-breaking reforestation
New Scientist (05/16/2002)
Human Origins and History
India defense looks to ancient text
BBC News (05/16/2002)
Unique Bronze Age archer unearthed
New Scientist (05/16/2002)
Some Language Experts Think Humans Spoke First With Gestures
NY Times (05/18/2002)
Sites
Politics and Commentary
Political Commentary
(L = Left; R = Right)
AlterNet (L)
American Prospect(L)
Cursor.org (L)
Mother Jones (L)
Nation (L)
National Review (R)
New Republic(LR)
OpinionJournal (R)
Slate (L)
Smirking Chimp (L)
Tompaine.com (L)
Town Hall (R)
Weekly Standard(R)
WorkingForChange (L)
Favorite Columnists
Art Buchwald
Maureen Dowd
Molly Ivins
Robert Novak
Robert Scheer
News Periodicals
Atlantic
New Yorker
Newsweek
TIME
USNEWS.com
The Weekly Rant
What Bush Knew Before Sept. 11 and Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S. There was a lot of debate this week on what the Bush Administration knew about the al Qaeda threat before the 9/11 tragedy. There is also a concern of why this evidence was withheld for eight months. Minimally, it does seem to suggest a possible cover up.
Bush’s statement that if he knew what was going to happen he would have protected America from that tragedy is a canard. I don’t know anyone reasonable that has accused Dubya of knowing about Osama bin Laden’s plan. However, I don’t think ignorance is a good enough excuse for the Bush Administration, CIA and the FBI. For example: Ashcroft learned of the FBI agent’s alert just after 9/11 (Bush Was Not Told), but why did the Administration sit on this information for so many months? We need to know why they didn’t know and how we can prevent this sort of attack in the future.
I think that Bush and his aides accusing Democrats of second-guessing or Ari Fleischer accusing the Democrats of resenting the President’s popularity as sounding petty and partisan. This view is born out in Howard Fineman’s Newsweek article ‘I Sniff Some Politics’
There has to be some accountability for the failure of our expensive security agencies and systems. For example: the F.B.I. knew for years about terror pilot training and yet this information went nowhere. Also, it looks like nobody in the Bush Administration, CIA or FBI read The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism, a study prepared for the Library of Congress in 1999.
William Kristol and Robert Kagan of the conservative Weekly Standard are calling for a blue-ribbon commission investigation into this matter. This is a better solution when on considers the strife and dissent on the Hill’s Sept. 11 Panel
We need to get to the bottom of what did and did not happened before 9/11. Once we find out the facts, then we can improve our intelligence and security systems to prevent this type of tragedy from recurring in the future.
Guns and Butter: Just call him Lyndon Baines Bush and Dubya’s New Deal. I can’t imagine that a fellow conservative calling Dubya LBJ is good sign. Even that conservative tart, Peggy Noonan, is comparing Bush to FDR! 😉 Since when has FDR been a conservative icon?
Mideast
Exploding Myths – Why Israel’s war on terrorism is working.
Jonathan Chait, Slate (05/13/2002)
Christians hit theological rift on Mideast policy
G. Jeffrey MacDonald, CS Monitor (05/14/2002)
Palestinians Want Reform–But on Own Terms
MARY CURTIUS, LA Times (05/14/2002)
Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?
Robert Fisk, Independent (05/14/2002)
US media: whose side are they on?
Brendan O’Neill, Spiked (05/14/2002)
Nine Wars Too Many
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times (05/15/2002)
Dr. Sharon and Mister Hyde Article
Gideon Samet, Ha’aretz (05/15/2002)
Ariel Sharon demonstrates how to look like you’re saying yes when you’re really saying no.
William Saletan, Slate (05/16/2002)
Is Arafat Capable of Peace?
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NY Times (05/17/2002)
Commentary of the Week
AlterNet — Tom DeLay’s Axis of Influence
Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet (05/10/2002)
Foul Ball: How a communist dictatorship and a U.S. embargo has silenced a Cuban historian.
Matt Welch, Reason (June 2002 Issue)
No [Atta and Iraq] meeting in Prague
Robert Novak, TownHall (05/13/2002)
Iraqi sanctions
Economist.com (05/15/2002)
Don’t Know Much About …
Editorial, CSMonitor (05/16/2002)
Journey to Havana
Editorial, NY Times (05/16/2002)
Give Carter His Due: In Cuba, the former president strikes a blow for freedom.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, OpinionJournal (05/16/2002)
GIs Battle ‘Ghosts’ in Afghanistan
Peter Baker, Washington Post (05/16/2002)
Abstinence Or Obstinacy?
Richard Cohen, Washington Post (05/17/2002)
US media cowed by patriotic fever, says CBS star
Matthew Engel, Guardian (05/17/2002)
Dicing with Armageddon: India and Pakistan
Economist.com (05/17/2002)
Pushing the Limit
Editorial, NY Times (05/19/2002)
Capitalism’s Hollow Core
Editorial, Washington Post (05/19/2002)
Bush Administration
Reversing Course, Bush Signs Bill Raising Farm Subsidies
DAVID E. SANGER, NY Times (05/14/2002)
Cringe for Mr. Bush
Editorial, Washington Post (05/14/2002)
No-Frills Arms Control
Editorial, NY Times (05/14/2002)
Base Politics
E. J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post (05/14/2002)
Lights Out on Bush’s Excuses
Robert Scheer, LA Times (05/14/2002)
White House eyes new nuclear arms
Bryan Bender, Boston Globe (05/14/2002)
GOP Takes In $33 Million At Fundraiser
Mike Allen, Washington Post (05/15/2002)
George Bush? He’s nice but dim, says crown prince
Matthew Engel, Guardian (05/15/2002)
Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers
Dan Eggen and Bill Miller, Washington Post (05/16/2002)
Pipeline Dream
William Rivers Pitt, WorkingForChange (05/16/2002)
Failing Intelligence – Why didn’t the CIA warn Bush properly?
Scott Shuger, Slate (05/17/2002)
Bush is still running from 9/11
Joan Walsh, Salon (05/18/2002)